The Wingless
by Pumpkin Ink
Summary: Leah thought, and not for the first time, that wings were the sole ingredient called for in a recipe for disaster.
1. Fledgling

**Author's Note:** this story is a sort of...five shot? Yeah, that sounds about right. It's set during Lash's junior year, so this takes place in the year before the movie. The OFC is a veritable ball of angst, so I've given you fair warning. Her mother is in the psych ward, she talks to her dead grandmother, and her father is stuck in the awkward position of raising a teenage girl. Her name is Leah Kingsbury, and she has wings. Unfortunately, they only span about two and a half feet. It's basically a story about what happens when you have wings but you can't fly. This is my answer to the question "why did Lash become a (sexy) villainous jerk?"

******—**

**Chapter One: Fledgling**

******—**

Power Placement was one big joke. All she'd done was shuffle nervously up the stairs to the hollers of "faster, faster" from the incessantly loud forty year-old—who should have never decided to wear shorts, ever—gingerly remove her jacket from her shoulders, and spread her wings. Even full-spread, they barely stretched out past her shoulders. Her choppy, frizzy blond hair was long enough that the feathers on her neck weren't visible, and her jacket was still half-on, concealing the pinfeathers on her wrists.

Her wings weren't even white. They were dotted with black, gray, and all manners of brown. But everyone in the gym had gone quiet and they were all staring at her, like she was a bona fide angel. And to make matters worse, the one word heard in that awkward silence doomed her for the next four years:

"Hero!"

That was the day when Leah thought, and not for the first time, that wings were the sole ingredient called for in a recipe for disaster.

—

Lash was lurking in the hallways, like some sort of villain. You'd think Principal Powers and the other teachers would have figured out the signs of evil plotting by now, but they remained blissfully ignorant of what went on behind closed doors, or even out in the open hallways. Not for the first time, he noticed Gwen Grayson and her short gray suede skirt. Not for the first time, he relished the thought of Penny Jones, the one-woman—and more, when the mood struck her—cheerleading squad.

Hey, he was seventeen. Looking at linoleum made him want to have sex. The flesh-and-blood girls walking around just helped his mind's eye along the path to fantasy-land.

"Hello, Jason," Gwen gave him a sultry look as she passed him by. Though it would have been sultry to any passerby or observer, Lash knew that she held no affection or desire for him. He couldn't help looking at her—he was a teenage boy, after all—but her head was filled with thoughts of bigger things. Diabolical, evil things. It was one of the many qualities Gwen Grayson had that most junior girls lacked: she had lived through this before, and she had no time for mistakes or history repeated.

"Yo, Susie T." He replied with one eyebrow raised. Her flirtatious gaze turned cold, cruel, and stony. He was reminded eerily of a dark hawk perched to strike a lab rat, a white one with red eyes that had no means of escape. And guess who the mouse was? He backed away a little and practically invited her to stalk towards him, ever the classic predator to her prey.

She grabbed his ear, yanked his head down, and hissed, "NEVER call me by that name again."

—

Leah moved slowly through the hallway, keeping to the walls where there were no lockers and on the fringes of the crowd where there were. Her jacket was clutched tight around her so that the high collar covered her neck and the too-long sleeves kept her wrists hidden. Her boots came almost to her knees and her pants were tucked in tight. She was safe from feather leakage.

Or so she thought.

Unfortunately, the feathers had a tendency to rub against whatever cloth happened to conceal them, and their sensitivity wasn't helping. A thousand tiny nerve endings made Leah shudder and curl further in on herself until she felt like she was walking close to the floor, curled up into an almost fetal position, more a ball with limbs and choppy pale hair than a girl. If it weren't nearly impossible to walk that way, she might have actually tried it. But then people would probably trip over her, and she didn't relish that thought. But at least people tended to kinda-sorta concentrate on where they were going, enough to avoid some of the physical contact with strangers. It was usually just a brush of a hand or a shoulder, maybe a leg or a foot.

Leah was built like a bird, with tiny bones that jutted out in harsh angles and no body fat. Her legs, arms, fingers, toes, nails, and neck were long. She was the proverbial stick-figure, with feathers stretching over her spinal cord and jutting out of the bones on her ankles and wrists. Her lack of development in any other areas made her look thirteen instead of sixteen. So when a boy - even a skinny boy in baggy clothes like Lash - ran into her in full force, he managed to knock her back on her bony butt.

She knew Lash, and there were two outcomes in this situation. The first was that he'd walk away without even looking down at her, going about his bad boy business. The second was that he'd deign to look down, laugh at her, and then proceed with the walking away and the bad boy business.

So imagine her surprise when Lash yanked her back up and asked, "You okay?" with a strange smirk clouding his pale face. But she wasn't so surprised that she couldn't retort back with the genius response of, "If mine!"

He let go of her and raised one dark eyebrow. With a shrug, he turned and started down the hall again, leaving Leah to curl in on herself again and pull her bag awkwardly over her shoulder. "I'm fine," She muttered to herself, tucking her arms around her body inside the jacket. If she could only manage to talk to herself, then what did words matter, anyway?

Not for the first time, Leah stood on the edge of the school. Her wings rustled under her jacket and she wished she really could fly home, so she could skip riding the bus. Unfortunately, a two and a half foot wingspan did nothing for the actually flight concept. The only real use she'd found for her wings were for the angel Halloween costume she'd worn every year in elementary school. That, and if she ever decided to spend insane amounts of money on Lolita outfits, she'd have the look down.

Her mother had tried to fly once. Sure, her wings were twice the size of Leah's and she'd even managed to lift herself about three feet in the air. But after she'd managed that, she'd fallen fifty-three feet and cracked her skull open on the pavement. She was still alive, if you could call a brain-damaged, mute existence living. Her mother was locked away in the psych ward because she kept trying to cut her wings off. She was on permanent suicide watch until something out of her hands killed her.

The sound of a motor snapped Leah out of her reverie, and she scrambled onto her bus so she wouldn't have to really fly home.


	2. Feathers

**Author's Note:** VERITABLE BALL OF ANGST. I warned you! The only genre FOR this story is ANGST. (Although since no one reviewed, I don't think anyone really cares but **Fiihox**. Thanks for the alert, by the way. =D) This chapter is short. Sorry about that. I usually write longer installments than this, but. . .oh well. There's just the tiniest hint of fluff in this chapter: first contact. And more to come, I promise.

Now, tell me who I'm talking to.

—

**Chapter Two: Feathers**

—

Her name was Leah. He'd managed to deduce that much, so far.

She was tiny. He'd been able to pull her back up as though she weighed nothing at all. She looked about thirteen, so she was probably a freshman. He hadn't seen her before, but he hadn't really been looking. Hell, he hadn't even cared enough to look. He only had eyes for Gwen.

But there was something about her. . .

He shook his head. He had mischief, mayhem, and general bullying to think about and accomplish for the day. Maybe he'd shove some tiny freshmen into their lockers and then ask them if they knew a Leah. Two birds with one stone.

Speed was looking at him expectantly, pausing as he stuffed a nerd into a trash can. Lash just laughed dryly. How did no one notice them when they did all this? How on earth could someone like him be so damn invisible?

—

Leah tugged at her long, ratty hair, pulling at the snarls and yanking out hairballs until her scalp tingled deliciously from the pain. A blond so stark and pale it almost glowed white under the sun looked unnatural anywhere else. The only color in her face was the deep bruise-purple stain that ringed her eyes like red wine spilled on white sheets. The foggy blue-gray of her eyes almost faded behind the pupils, big and black like she'd just come from a dark room. She sat up in her bed and stared across the room into the mirror. From the angle, she could see the little cluster of black, tan, white and brown feathers ruffle across the back of her neck. If she concentrated hard enough, wrinkling her forehead and nose, she could make them move a little bit.

She was sitting in the school library on the corner of the back corner table. She'd stacked books she had no intention of reading around her like a fortress, and she was laying over her crossed arms with her hair over her face, her cheek pressed into her forearm. Sure, her hair wasn't an adequate shield. It was almost translucent. But she could always just close her eyes. She could only see out of one eye anyway, with her arms as a pillow. You couldn't just lay face-forward on your arms. It started to hurt your face after awhile.

A chair scraped out at her table and she jumped so high that her thighs hit the underside of the table. She bit her lip and shut her mouth around the scream bubbling in her throat. But the scream died and another sound rose entirely when she felt long, skinny fingers brush through the feathers on the back of her neck. A small moan escaped from her mouth and she didn't know whether it was the scream's dying breath or the fear welling up in the pit of her stomach. She hated those feathers. She didn't want anyone touching them.

"Leah, right?" He asked expectantly.

Then she heard a deep, throaty male chuckle and she looked up. That guy, the one who'd run into her. Jason? His name was Jason. He was the Freshman Terror, He Who Stuffs Nerds in Lockers. It was hard not to be wary of Jason, and Leah was wary of everyone. She knew who he was. But how did he know her?

He was probably waiting for her to answer, so she did. Nodding like an obedient little bird, she whispered, "Yeah." When he kept staring at her, she looked down at the table. It was made out of this interesting wood so dark that it was almost burgundy. But she could still feel him looking at her. "What do you want?" She whimpered after a few awkward minutes.

With a defensive snort he replied with a helpful, "Nothing." She could hear the absurdity in his voice. Maybe he had no idea what he wanted? Most people, herself included, had no idea. He probably wasn't so different.

"Okay," She retorted brilliantly.

"I'm. . ." Suddenly, Jason Garwin didn't sound like the right name. He shook his head and suddenly blurted, "Lash. I'm Lash."

Leah looked at him then, really looked at him. She held out her hand, stretching the sleeve back so another little gathering of feathers showed through. He shook and she smiled a little before whispering, "It's nice to meet you, Lash."

They sat there in the awkward silence until the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch period.

Lash walked away first, leaving Leah to watch him go. She shook her head and curled back into her stupor for those precious three minutes until she had to move her butt to class. For some reason, the line of him in his jeans from the hem of his shirt to the tops of his shoes as he moved away from her stuck in her mind like pins and needles on her brain. She was suddenly more aware than she'd been in months, since they'd wheeled her mother away on a gurney and her grandmother had collapsed into her like a dying doll, clutching her chest and choking on her last wheezy breath.

Shaking her head as she entered the classroom, she concentrated solely on the Enhancing Elixir. It wouldn't give her the boosts she needed, but maybe it would give her the power to change.


	3. Flux

**Author's Note:** Have you ever seen a guy (maybe a guy you knew as a friend, maybe not), talking to some other girl? Something inside you shatters and you wonder how you couldn't see it before: you LIKE this guy! And that realization and the jubilation of knowing that comes with it crashes and falls through the floor once you remember the other girl. And you feel like you want to scream. Also, have you ever blown up and not known why? And then felt like a complete tool afterwards because you just screwed up royally and hurt someone you care about?

That's pretty much the extent of this chapter. You don't even have to read it now! But I'd like it if you would anyway. And I'd also like some feedback. . . (nudge nudge wink wink)

—

**Chapter Three: Flux**

—

A month later, Leah was thinking about Lash. And she felt like an idiot for doing so.

Of course, they weren't the amorous thoughts of a high school sophomore with a crush. They were thoughts of terror and turmoil with just a dash of friendship on the side. She didn't want him to talk about how she shivered under his touch when he, or anyone for that matter, touched the feathers on the back of her neck. She didn't want anyone to find out that she had feathers anywhere except on her wings, let alone that they were starting to grow in her hair. So far, they were white and tan and black, and you could actually seem them against the paleness of her hair. She was starting to worry that feathers would be all that grew from her head, like they had with her mother.

Boys talked. They made you think that talking was the last thing on their little minds, but they still talked. And Leah didn't want anyone talking about her. That was why she'd decided to go to Sky High in the first place. It was better than the alternative: walking the halls of Maxville High when everyone knew you were trailer trash and your mother was in a straitjacket, whispering when you walked by. Odds were it had nothing whatsoever to do with you, but it still felt that way. You could feel the eyes like a weight on your skin, suffocating.

She gave that up, that eternal gaze, to turn invisible here with people who were no more normal than she as distractions from her strangeness. And she didn't know which she would have preferred.

Because, as startling as the revelation was, she wanted him to see her.

It had been almost a month since they'd first sat down in the library. Lash saying hello to a lowly sophomore in the halls every day? Legendary. A sophomore sitting at the popular table? Unheard of since Penny became the cheerleading squad. Lash having a friend, a female friend, a girl friend, who he had no intentions on? Completely insane.

So Leah was left to wonder: what did Lash want with her?

—

Unfortunately, Lash didn't know either. But he didn't think or ponder, no depth in the brain that there was in the heart. He was mostly angry, or bored. And he certainly wasn't in love. He wanted Gwen, and he admired her. She had this spark in her soul, a glint in her sharp brown eyes, a dream she would achieve by any means she had.

Speaking of Gwen. She was wearing a pink button-down shirt tucked into a tight black skirt today, with a little slit up the side. Most girls couldn't pull off the tucked-in thing. Gwen pulled it off beautifully. Of course, the assets hidden beneath the shirt and skirt were the only reason why Lash even remembered what she was wearing. And he'd probably forget in a minute.

"There she is," Penny muttered. "Lash's little girlfriend."

Lash rolled his eyes. That was Penny's new nickname for Leah. But when he turned around, he saw she was half-right.

Leah was little. It was almost unnerving. She was wearing a cotton white dress with those little accordion-style ruffles that only worked on girls with no breasts whatsoever. The skirt was long and flowy and almost hid how bird-like her legs were. In white she looked almost unhealthily pale, and her freckles stood out against the white of her nose. Her clunky leather boots and big black leather jacket made the whole effect positively ridiculous. Like she was trying for two looks, one of which would suit her in another color and one that would suit her in another universe.

Then he realized: she was wearing that huge jacket to hide her wings.

—

Of course, Leah wasn't comfortable in the cafeteria. She always felt like people were staring at her. Oh, she knew full-well that they were in all likelihood too engrossed in their own problems and angst to give a crap about the little bird girl. But she still felt like she was being watched. All the time. It wasn't a great feeling. She got her sandwich, picked off the turkey, lettuce, and the slice of rubber that passed for cheese until she was left with the bread and the pickles. Once she'd sat at the nearest empty table she could find, she proceeded to open the sandwich and crunch on the little pickle slices until the juice ran over her fingers and down her chin. She licked it off as best she could but she knew that her fingers were going to be sticky until she got home and showered.

Chocolate milk and a pickle sandwich. It was just crazy enough to work.

As she chugged the carton she noticed the glares of multiple Pennys. So she was friends with Lash. So what? So it completely flew in the way of the status quo at any high school. (Even one for kids so freakish in a different sort of way that they made the "freaks" look like normal kids in bad outfits.) So what? They exchanged greetings and pleasantries in the hallways. Lash asked to borrow Leah's A.P. textbooks for his remedial classes. And they sometimes laughed within a few feet of each other. That was pretty much the extent of it.

They were friends. School friends. Friends who didn't see each other outside of school.

That was all.

No, really.

She wasn't agonizing over this. She'd just drink her chocolate milk.

There was another girl staring at her. Brown hair, short skirt, beautiful. She laughed when she came up behind Lash at their table and ran her hands over his shoulders, but her eyes still locked with Leah's. Cold, observatory, and far older than they should have been. Brown eyes were usually so warm. Hers were cold and hard like thick glass, curtains she slid down over the "windows to her soul". She was guarded and she was careful. And she was looking at Leah like the winged girl wasn't a person at all, but a strand in the web of her grand design, a thread that might started to weave into the heart of the matter if she wasn't careful.

But. . .she wasn't that important to Lash. And he wasn't that important to her. So why were her hands on his shoulders making Leah's heart ache?

So Leah caught herself staring at him sometimes. So he sometimes waited for her when she had P.E. and he had English and she'd come out of the locker room with damp hair and he'd mess it up. So she actually let him touch her. So what? It wasn't like she was special. He was friendly with girls. He used his hands, sometimes in incredibly unproductive ways. He touched boys too, but only to trip them, shove them in lockers, or stuff them in trash cans.

She wasn't special to him. This girl obviously was. His eyes followed her. It was. . .unfair.

Unfair?

Why had she thought that?

Lash was leaning against the opposite wall to the gym when Leah left fifth period. She had actually hoped he wouldn't come this time, unlike the times before. She usually left her gym clothes on and wore her jacket over them for the rest of the day. The sophomores only had P.E. twice a week and doing it this way meant she'd never forget to bring her clothes home. She always took a shower in one of the private stalls with curtains. The sweat sticking to her skin wasn't a sensation she enjoyed, or she'd just slip out the door early. Her hair was also so light and thin that when sweat worked through it, it went stringy and began to resemble straw.

"Hey. . ." She shut the door and stood against it, as if its solidness could keep her up. She'd been feeling a little sick since lunch and when she got sick, she tended to pass out like a pathetic wimp with no stamina and sleep until she was well. She didn't want to fall asleep in a building hovering thousands of feet in the air.

He raised one eyebrow at her and smirked. "What's wrong?"

Suddenly, she felt more than fine. Fueled, even. On fire. She was mad. Why? Oh, who gave a fuck? "What's wrong?" She mocked, and flung her back pack over one shoulder. "What's wrong? What do you want from me, Jason?" She didn't even pause long enough to answer the question. "I don't think you know what you want from any girl, but you're not getting it from Gwen Grayson and you're not getting it from me!"

With that, Leah just walked away, feeling like a big pile of poop. And Lash was left standing in the exact same place until the bell rang, wondering what the hell he'd done wrong.


	4. Found

**Author's Note:** The idea of a "folding man" (what Lash is) is something I got from this TV show I watch called _Sanctuary_. However, I dunno where it came from. Suffice it to say, a folding man. . .folds. Lash's power isn't so much stretching as matter control, being able to alter your own basic structure; bones, skin, muscles, atoms. And yes, I'm a nerd. How did you know?

**Japanese terminology:**  
baa-chan: a casual variant of the formal obaa-san, an endearing term for your grandmother.  
haha: what you call your own mother casually, for someone else's mother you use okaa-san or just kaa-san.

—

**Chapter Four: Found**

—

"Hey, baa-chan?"

Leah kneaded her back against the side of the Japanese-style headstone, custom made for her grandmother's grave. By all rights, she should've been buried back in snowy Hokkaido with the rest of the Souma clan, but she'd wanted to be buried where Leah could visit without need of an airplane. She said that if she was going to be gone, at least Leah could have something close to talk to. The rest of the family never understood how some half-breed could be more important than tradition, but she hadn't cared. She'd loved Leah. And Leah still loved her. She liked to think that her grandmother's soul was still out there, loving her. Whatever helps you sleep at night, right?

Besides, who the hell was she talking to if no one was listening?

"I met a boy."

She took a deep breath. The crisp morning air filled her nose and left her with a strange aftertaste in her throat.

"His name is Jason, but everyone calls him Lash for some reason. He's a folding man. He can change his bone structure and stretch and contract his molecules, like rubber. It's kind of weird for the powers you met, but I guess we don't have room to talk, do we?" Shaking her head with a harsh little laugh, she tugged her coat tight over her chest and tried to drag the edges of her sleeves back through the cuffs of the jacket. "He's sort of my friend, this boy, baa-chan." Leah continued in a sad, almost wistful voice.

"But maybe I like him more than I thought. . ."

—

The gym was crowded. Today was the day before Christmas Break and that meant only one thing: S.T.C. Day.

Right before the holidays, Sky High had a whole mandatory day for students where everyone sat on the bleachers and everyone else had Save the Citizen matches. It was some old tradition started in the days of Arthur Stronghold, the Admiral, Will Stronghold's great grandfather, and one of the first graduates of Sky High. It was still a big to-do, and the one day a year Lash actually looked forward to school, the two-week break that followed not withstanding.

And it was the one day a year he got to throw people he hated around and no one could stop him. As a bonus, they even cheered him on while he did it.

Today was his day. Nothing would stand in the way of that. Not even Gwen and her tantalizing hot pink skirt. Not even Leah and her inability to make any sense.

The bleachers were hard blue plastic. After attending this school, Leah hated blue more than she had when her mother had decided she wanted to touch the sky, and subsequently leapt off a building. She had to wear a stupid sky blue gym shirt with cloud white shorts. It made her feel ill and made her look even more washed out than she already did. The ever present circles beneath her eyes had begun to balance everything out a little, as had the black feathers that had crept into her hair.

She felt someone tug on one of those feathers and looked up. Of course it was Lash. He was the only person who bothered to get close enough to touch her.

"Are these. . ." He squinted a little and cocked his head to one side. He looked deceptively innocent and she squashed the desire to snort. "Growing out of your hair?"

Leah nodded, a quick burst of motion that yanked the feather from between his long fingers. "Stranger things have happened," She mumbled to the bleacher in front of her. Never mind that the feathers were black, white, and a pale, warm brown that matched the other feathers on her body and on her wings.

"But they don't match!" He replied with a teasingly gorgeous smile.

She couldn't help but snort at that. He was wearing his blue gym sweatpants with a long sleeved prison striped shirt. If there were ever a walking clash, he'd be it. But she got this sense that he knew that and he dressed the way he did anyway. A few seconds later, he swiped her hand and she nearly jumped out of her skin and out of her thoughts. She looked at him with wide eyes, eerily reminiscent of a frightened bird, and found that she couldn't look away. He brushed dry lips over her knuckles and looked up at her with his mouth still over her hand.

A blush spread over her face like a crashing wave, bright red mask covering pale white flesh. She knew that every inch of her face and even some of her neck was crimson.

"For good luck," He told her devilishly, and he practically bounded down the bleachers and into the arena, where Speed offered him the congratulatory guy-five.

Lash was on fire, literally and figuratively. He'd beaten twelve pairs of "heroes" and he was still on fire. Only now, some stupid freshman had actually thrown a fireball at his arm, reversing the positive polarity of the phrase "on fire" in today's awesome context. He didn't really know why. Was it Gwen in the audience, with actual approval in her face? Or was it the delightful red Leah turned whenever he looked her way?

A bit of both, if he was perfectly honest with himself. But who needs honestly when you get to throw freshmen at mailboxes?

Speed snickered as he ran past, a laugh in a phantom blur. Lash turned back and flexed his arms for the audience. Cheers lifted and roared through the gym, to Boomer's considerable annoyance. Fuel for the fire.

And Leah's red face? An accelerant like no other.

—

Leah, meanwhile, kept touching her hand. She ran her fingers over her knuckles and chewed ferociously on her bottom lip until she could actually taste blood. She knew she was still blushing, but she decided to accept that and sit there pretending no one was watching her. She knew now that they actually were paying attention to her, the girl Lash was giving favors to. He was a cute guy who didn't date. People had actually assumed Gwen and Lash were a couple until Leah. In their eyes, it was all some juicy school scandal.

She couldn't take this. Not again, not now, not here, not him. . .

An uproarious, screaming cheer ran through the crowd as they rose like some big wave of gym clothes and entertained stupidity as another citizen was mulched. Someone was coming up the bleachers towards her. She knew who it was without looking up. It was always him. He kept coming back for her, and she didn't know why.

His hands were on her face and his lips were on hers before she could even move. He moved one hand down the back of her neck and lifted her so they were both standing in the middle of that cheering crowd as silence spread through the room and everyone was probably looking at them, but Lash didn't care. Today was his day, and he'd wanted to kiss her. He got what he wanted, always.

Once he let go, Leah just stood for a second atop the bleacher, then she blinked and woke herself up. She saw everyone looking at her like they were expecting her to answer that question. But she couldn't. She just. . .couldn't.

So she ran. And no one stopped her.


	5. Fly

**Author's Note:** Somehow, I'm happy this is done. This is actually the first story that ISN'T a one-shot that I've finished and posted. So, yay for me. I'm a little depressed about the lack of feedback, especially since there were so many alerts, but the quality of the feedback is excellent and I love everyone who bothered to give me a good word.

—

**Chapter Five: Fly**

—

"Leah, wait!"

So they were ditching class. Lash skipped classed every day. Leah just didn't care at this point. She was a raw ball of nerves and she needed to escape the stares and the confines of the school's walls. People were looking at her. Not for the first time, she wished she could fade away. It was all happening again. The looks, the whispers, the rumors, the focus. . .she couldn't take it. Not again. Not now.

Why was he even chasing her? She wasn't even his girl. All she'd done for weeks was yell and avoid him and look at him like he was an alien being. He didn't owe her anything. Except an apology for kissing her in front of the entire student population, but he wasn't going to admit that. There was a lot Lash wasn't admitting to himself lately.

She was huddled near the edge of the school grounds, hunched and staring over the side like she was going to throw up. Her hair was in her face and the tops of her wings were sticking out of the neck of her jacket, tiny feathers that looked soft to the touch. He couldn't touch her now. It was just too weird.

". . .less."

She was sniffling and almost crying. He got the sense that this had nothing to do with him kissing her so much as some other drama.

"I'm worthless. I can't do anything, I can't stop anything. . ."

He shook his head, then remembered she couldn't see him. "I know a little about you, and I know you're not worthless."

Leah looked back, a surprising spark of anger in her eyes. "You don't know anything," She snapped. "Not really. Not about me or my life or my mother," She rose with each word, like they gave her little bursts of strength to stand. "The only thing people see when they look at me are these stupid wings. So I have wings?" She spat venomously. "So what? I can't even fly!"

Lash reached towards her. She stepped back, realized her foot wasn't touching the ground, looked down, and fell off the edge of Sky High.

—

He watched her disappear over the edge in a split second and jumped when he felt someone's hand on his shoulder. Gwen stood behind him with a strangely somber look on her face. "You had to make her visible," The girl shook her head. "If no one knew who she was, this wouldn't be so serious."

Lash just stared down, not quite hearing Gwen.

He'd killed her. Leah was dead. She couldn't fly with those little wings. She'd never been able to fly. She would fall and she would break into more pieces than she was already broken into, and it'd be a kind of broken that could not be fixed.

Had he wanted to fix her?

Maybe he had. How stupid was that, to want to fix another person, when you couldn't even fix yourself?

"What do I do?" He whispered, and finally turned to look Gwen in the eye.

She shrugged like it mattered little or nothing to her, and it didn't. Leah was just another girl. She didn't matter in Gwen's grand design. She was nothing to Gwen Grayson, Sue Tenney, or Royal Pain. But she was something to Lash, so Gwen tried, ". . .hope for a miracle."

And in some crazy human way, Lash hoped with all his heart.

—

_"Every soul in the world can sprout wings and fly, bijou. But they must first make the choice to fall, or to soar."_

It was probably stupid to think of your long-dead grandmother when you're falling thousands of feet to your death, but that quote circled over and over like a vulture in Leah's mind. A vulture trying to distract her with thoughts from the problem at hand, the fact that she was falling fast enough that she couldn't see anything but a charcoal gray blur as the street ran at her in full force. She couldn't do anything to stop it. Maybe she didn't want to do anything to stop it. . .NO. She wanted to live, dammit. The only thing that had ever made her feel alive was when Lash kissed her, five seconds of lip-to-lip contact. She wanted to live long enough for something that didn't involve a boy to make her feel like life was worth more than this, like there was something to live for. . .but the ground was so CLOSE. Any second now, and she'd never feel anything again.

"Are you okay?"

An angel, maybe. Her grandmother had talked about the ten'nyo, angels who brought bliss to the dead and dying to ease their passing. Maybe she deserved bliss, but she didn't think she did. And wasn't bliss supposed to feel less like air crushing all around her?

"Holy shit, you just fell out of the sky!"

Not an angel, then. Angels don't say words like "shit" and "holy" in the same sentence, if they even say "shit" at all.

"Just say something, I'm begging you. Don't be dead. I can't take seeing a dead girl today. Please, please, please. . ."

A babbling non-angel. Huh. She was saved. She felt oddly disappointed.

"Leah."

She basically couldn't think of anything else to say. Maybe "thank you" would've been better, but she hadn't thought of it at the time. Contrary to what writers and directors and politicians would have you believe, people rarely think of the right words to say when they should be said. She actually turned to look at her rescuer, a girl with a pointed chin, pudgy cheeks, and dark brown hair. Her eyes were grey and piercing like dark steel, her skin pale, creamy, and dotted with three tiny zits on her chin. A pair of plastic glasses hung out of the front pocket of her dress, black corduroy that wrinkled over her big chest and down over her thighs. She was wearing a grey knit sweater underneath that dulled in comparison to those eyes. Leah wondered if she was hot. It was July, after all. Her smile was uncertain and only seemed to spread up the left side of her mouth, like the right side was afraid to join in.

Leah stood up from her prone position in midair, pausing to let her legs shake under her until she could really stand. Her mind still whirling and overflowing like a blender still spinning with no top to speak of. She shook her head and held out her hand before repeating to the girl, "I'm Leah."

She smiled and shook Leah's hand. "Phoebe," She replied.


End file.
